Blog

Articles about quality, environmental and safety compliance issues.

Resource development and infrastructure improvements were top of mind when a new Northwest Territories (NWT) government was elected in the fall of 2011. Since that time, the government has tried to realize these goals by reducing regulatory uncertainty and risk. Recently the NWT government, together with the Federal government, undertook major steps to meet various objectives through the passage of a new law, entitled “The Northwest Territories Devolution Act”.

This law is historic in that it implements the devolution process for the Northwest Territories. Devolution refers to the process where a major transfer of power is made from one level of government, in this case the Federal Government, to another, in this case the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT). With devolution, the GNWT has gained more province-like powers for the management of public lands, water and resources. To learn more about the process of devolution, please click here.

Accompanying this historic new law is the enactment of other laws, which are particularly notable for those in the oil and gas industry, including:

The Oil and Gas Operations Act (SNWT2014,c14), which will be applicable for those operations using onshore oil and gas resources. A newly-created Office of the Regulator of Oil and Gas Operations will be responsible for the administration of this Act for onshore oil and gas resources, excluding those found in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region. To read a backgrounder on this new regulator, please click here news.exec.gov.nt.ca/wp-content/uploads/Backgrounder-Oil-and-Gas-Regulator.pdf.

The Petroleum Resources Act (SNWT2014,c15), which will govern the lease of oil and gas rights on all the lands which may be used for petroleum development and are controlled by the Commissioner of the Northwest Territories.

The Waters Act (SNWT2014,c18) will govern how the GNWT regulates the use of water in the onshore areas of the NWT. To read a backgrounder on the new Waters Act, as prepared by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, please click here.

The devolution of powers from the Federal government to the GNWT means that the territorial government will now enjoy much of the same powers that provinces do when regulating natural resource development and environmental stewardship. For industry, especially those involved in oil and gas, devolution should mean a simpler legal framework where regulatory uncertainty and risk is reduced.

Nimonik is happy to announce our Beta version of our easy to use Incident Management Tool. After carefully looking at the available options on the market, we determined that the missing element in Incident Management is ease of use. Incident reporting forms are long, complicated and have too many fields to enter. With the exception of government reportable incidents, the forms generally do not need to be particularly long.

We all know that a tool that is user friendly will be used more. I am certain that we can agree one one thing, your team should report as many incidents, near misses and opportunities for improvement as possible – we all know more information makes your company safer.

The tools we found on the web and on mobile devices are remarkably hard to use, complex, costly and burdensome. That is why Nimonik is thrilled to offer a simple and quick incident reporting and management tool. Already available on our website, NimonikApp.com, it will be available in iPhone, iPad and Android formats by March 2015.

Yes, if you are a user of NimonikApp.com you can simply send an email to incident@nimonikapp.com and it will create an incident with the date, person, subject and body of your email. Login later to add details on the incident, issue a corrective action and conduct root cause analysis.

Some more incident reporting features you can expect to see soon:

Add attachments – photos, documents and other evidence to incidents;

Add extra people to incidents – witnesses, supervisors, contractors; and

Behind your car, your chicken dinner, and your slick iPad there lies a myriad of laws, regulations, and industrial standards that allow or prohibit certain industry practices. Companies know that regulatory compliance is a complex and tricky business. Few, if any, can claim to understand all of their legal obligations. The US Federal Code of Laws has over 200,000 pages; at that size, it seems unlikely that anyone is fully aware of their obligations. In Canada, the power sharing between Federal, Provincial and Municipal bodies can make compliance a tricky and moving target. In addition to government laws and regulations, we are also subject to international standards and codes created outside of government halls.

Most people outside of the auditing and legal compliance field don’t realize the complexity of the situation. In addition to traditional legal obligations outlined by Acts, regulations, codes, statutes and other documents adopted by democratic institutions, law around the world reference thousands of industrial standards. For example, Canadian law references industrial standards created by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) over 1187 times. These standards are often overlooked by companies when they attempt to navigate the complex regulatory system. Whether you import or manufacture products or are a contractor for a larger company, these standards apply to you in one form or another.

Industrial standards are typically created outside of government by industry experts organized in standards bodies such as ANSI, NFPA, CSA, ISO and others. Once published, standards concerning a variety of environmental, health, safety and quality issues – from oil storage tanks to handling fuel and hazardous materials, to food safety – are referenced in laws and regulations, making them de-facto law. Governments outsource their responsibility to external industry experts who volunteer their time to write these standards, saving government resources. For example, the National Fire Code, an important regulatory document created by the Canadian Center for National Research can only be purchased in CD-ROM (yes, CD-ROM!) or in paper format and costs $190. Cost recovery by standards bodies is understandable, yet government needs to take a more active role in assuring that all companies have access to the standards they reference.

Modern democratic countries are founded on the rule of law and typically stipulate that laws be made available to citizens, free of charge. Since one cannot plead ignorance of law in court, one must have access to the laws that govern them. How can you respect rules set forth in a document you do not have access it? Since most industrial standards can only be obtained through a financial payment, their status is in direct conflict with access to law. Yet, the payments that are received by government and standards bodies is very limited. For example, the Québec government only collected $ 3.7 million dollars for all the standards it ever sold in its History. The median standard sold by Québec generated a revenue of $ 27 dollars for the government. Though difficult to break out, the CSA obtains some of its 290 million dollars in annual revenue from standards sales , according to its financial statements here. We are hardly talking about huge amounts of money when compared to the potential benefits to Canadian industry which could adopt more progressive standards.

Why are industrial standards not free? Despite the digitization of standards and free distribution through the internet, most standards come with restrictive copyrights and expensive price tags. The experts who write the standards are typically not paid; therefore, the revenues from sales of standards are primarily geared towards the standards bodies and their administrative staff that manage the committees, teams and publishing system. The costs of standards inevitably increase the cost of respecting the standard, reduces knowledge of best practices and discourages companies from endorsing progressive management standards. If standards were freely accessible, we would expect companies to adopt and respect them more.

While this applies to all standards, we can restrict this plea for openness to environmental, health and safety standards. It is arguably more urgent that we release EHS standards than other types of standards. EHS standards are designed to protect two things: the environment and worker safety. Surely, we would want our corporations and organizations to have that as their highest priority. Yet, by placing the standards behind pay-walls and complex copyright law, we are doing just the opposite. The perception of the need to charge for standards is slowly starting to change.

Consensus on the need to reform standards bodies and access to standards seems to be growing as seen in these great conversations on LinkedIn here, here and here. We could make the case that voluntary standards not referenced in law, such as ISO 14001, be sold for profit to help fund the standards development. But it seems clear that obligatory standards referenced in law should be free. If a standard is referenced in law, it becomes law and citizens should have uninhibited access to it.

After some haggling in Canada, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) has made occupational, health and safety standards referenced in law publicly available. However, the CSA made them available in the least usable format possible. To access the standards, you need to sign-up to their website, select a province and then you can access a poorly formatted image of the standard, which means you cannot copy-paste content or share important requirements with your colleagues or clients. Clearly, the CSA did the bare minimum to meet the government request to offer the referenced OSH standards to the public. The difficulty of access to the standards ensures most companies still purchase copies of the them since those offered by the CSA are unusable. Or, they just ignore the standards and rely on the lack of inspectors.

Standards bodies often argue that they need some form of funding before they can set a standard free. There are other solutions, that would bring more overall benefits to the Canadian economy, than simply charging for standards. Perhaps we should stipulate that if the government chooses to reference a standard in a law, it should compensate the creators of the standard. Government should not pass the buck to the public, small businesses or people who are subject to the standards. In Europe, where voluntary standards adoption is more common, we notice that the manufacturing base is capable of producing the world’s best machinery, cars and equipment. Correlation is not causation, but it seems logical that the adoption of progressive industry-leading standards for quality, environment and health and safety will lead to benefits for all of society and for the economy.

While Canada still lags behind, the United States has notable activists who are fighting for access to standards and the fight is best described in this blog post by Carl Malamud. The fight has led to (questionably legal) online data dumps of standards that are still locked behind paywalls (data dumps here, here, and code projects here). This provocative tactic has unsurprisingly led to lawsuits, but it has also clearly shown the pressing need for a change in the system.

As technology accelerates and citizens and companies’ frustration mounts, I fear that more and more people will resort to “freeing” standards without permission. Both the government and the various standards bodies need to rapidly evolve their business model and offer standards referenced in law in open digital formats for free.

Technology makes many aspects of our lives easier. It has revolutionized the way we communicate, interact with others, and perform many mundane tasks on the job. Environmental, health and safety (EHS) professionals are not immune to technological improvements: they, too, can find ways to make use of new tools to streamline responsibilities such as incident databases, audit trend tracking, evidence gathering, and more. Today’s tablets provide an easy, powerful and flexible tool that can deliver spectacular results.

Defining a Process

In order to ensure that the technology serves you (and not the other way around), you need to make the best use of the tools at your disposal, by outlining a process to follow. Typically, an auditor will first attempt to convert an audit sheet, spreadsheet or a Word document to structure the data and make it reusable. This is a good first step, but we can go further.

This is a big step up from the former way of handling audits. For example, Word, Excel, PDF and Email do not take advantage of features available through more modern devices such as the ability to take photos, record interviews, add contextual information, check regulatory information, issue corrective actions or automate report generation. If your current workflow is simply exported to Excel, a number of benefits of mobile technology are lost such as the ability to access up-to-date regulatory information, automate follow-ups on outstanding tasks, and quickly report on findings and performance. A traditional EHS audit can now be redesigned for use on a portable tablet device.

The first step in using technology to automate and replace tedious manual tasks is to ask yourself, “Given the software and devices that are now available, how could I perform my tasks differently?”

Building an Audit Plan for a World with iPads and Android Devices

Use your current audit checklists to dig into the core requirements you really need to audit. Each audit requirement should be carefully designed. Ask questions like these to help you define key requirements:

Is it really a requirement or an unnecessary detail?

How important is it?

Is it related to a group of questions?

Are there reference photos to include?

Once you have defined your key requirements, it’s time to create your audit template. You can build the checklist in Excel using a free audit template here.

Once you have created a template with the proper questions and categories, you can add reference materials: photos, procedures, and other information that will be useful during the audit. The auditor can then go through each requirement and link evidence (photos, audio, and documents), and you can set their findings on the compliance status. After the findings are captured, corrective actions, due dates and responsible people can be identified, and those people will get follow-up emails to ensure they act on the identified issues.

An audit should be a seamless process for each item on your checklist. In order to make this happen, you need a powerful tool that can assist with your auditing needs. Unfortunately, Word and Excel don’t cut it anymore.

Top Four Benefits of Audits with Tablets

A broad range of information can be captured by various mediums (text, dictation, photos, and documents).

A vast reduction in paperwork and consumption of time, which results in increased efficiency.

The reduction of errors, omissions and non-compliance.

A simple-to-use interface that works with you every step of the way.

The ability to file evidence, processes, and photos in an organized fashion alongside the applicable inspection questions.

Modern Technology

Everyone is now comfortable with user-friendly technology in their daily lives. The apps we use at home should now be leveraged in the workplace, to help workers get the job done with fewer errors and more efficiency. Many tools exist to help EHS workers perform their duties while minimizing time, and maximizing output, so be sure to read How to Pick the Best Solution For You (PDF).

Besides all the benefits mentioned, adopting modern tools will help auditors improve the image they wish to project to their clients, staff and managers. Companies that use tablets, software, and tools in innovative ways can be perceived as offering better value, and they can encourage others to rise to the challenges of modern industrial standards.

The world is constantly innovating, and it’s up to you to ensure that you remain ahead of the curve. You can remain a leader in your space and lend confidence to your clients and colleagues!

How to Build Your Audit

The key to audit building is to work with a software system that enables you to create a checklist that you can work through.

Set up your facility in the system so that all inspections done at this location will be found in the appropriate place.

Create an audit template that includes your checklist questions, legal references (if applicable) and detailed instructions for anything that is potentially unclear.

Conduct the audit on site with your tablet using your template and evaluation parameters.

Record your findings, and issue corrective actions for items that are not in compliance.

Create a report from the gathered data, and track your corrective actions to completion.

Once you have created your custom-made audit, you can begin using new technology to better handle your audits. Today’s tablets can give you a simple-to-use , powerful, and flexible tool that can provide fantastic results.

Mobile technology continues to make extraordinary advances, contributing to the growth across all industries. New software tools and apps have taken existing work processes and provided people with the ability to do their work faster and more efficiently.

Environmental, health and safety (EHS) professionals in particular are now able to leverage the progression of mobile technology for their auditing process (e.g., regulatory tracking and trend analysis, finding-tracking databases, and audit performance tracking).

The use of computers and the Internet have been a great advantage to conducting audits more efficiently. However, it’s the emergence of tablets – most notably the iPad – that has created the most powerful and simple tool to improve implementing and reporting audits.

The following are some of the main benefits of using an auditing app as opposed to the traditional paper and pen method:

Real-Time Results

By using an app with real time-results that provides immediate feedback, auditees can now reduce the delay before receiving their audit report. Less time wasted means a problem that needs immediate attention can be addressed quicker. By using an auditing app, the results are automatically uploaded and available for real-time analysis. This provides you with the ability to audit on a daily basis and issue and act on corrective actions immediately.

Audit applications that provide real-time results give easy access to data. You have a rich set of dashboards with team audit tools. This improves the transparency within the audit team and also leads to quicker response times.

Cloud Storage

Pen and paper auditing checklists are a thing of the past. They are inefficient, and they take up a lot of physical space. They can also be hard to recover when you need them. With cloud storage, you’re able to access the information you need at any time of the day from any location and all within seconds.

“Cloud storage can provide the benefits of greater accessibility and reliability, rapid deployment, and strong protection for data backup with archival and disaster recovery purposes. [It can] lower overall storage costs as a result of not having to purchase, manage and maintain expensive hardware.”

Time Efficiency

Collecting, condensing and analyzing data for an audit can be a heavy burden. Studies have shown that, on average, auditors spend in excess of 40% of their time documenting and reviewing work papers and preparing reports.

Using a mobile auditing app will help maximize efficiency. It will eliminate wasted time and provide more-sophisticated, immediate results. An auditing app is used as a one-stop shop for completing and uploading checklists, viewing results, enhancing the quality of your data and making issue resolution easier.

Understanding and keeping up with the ever-changing regulatory requirements and laws can be hard. However, by using an auditing app, you don’t have to keep up. The technology instilled in an auditing app updates the regulations automatically. You need never fall behind on regulatory changes.

Making the move from paper and pen audits to a mobile auditing app gives you access to real-time results and cloud storage. It makes the auditing process much more efficient and leaves no room for error.

If you want to learn how you can make the transition, contact a Nimonik Expert today at 1-888-608-7511.

Audits play a fundamental role in certifying that proper food safety practices are being abided to. The Global Food and Safety Resource reported, “audits are a crucial component of maintaining food safety standards and certification, by providing transparency and assurance that standards are being maintained”.

While ensuring safety in food production is an essential component in protecting a facility’s certification, the safety of the food’s consumption can actually be a case of life and death. And with the progression of technology, making audits easier than ever before, there is no reason for someone’s life or business to be in danger.

Foodborne Diseases

The number one desired result of food production auditing is to prevent foodborne illness. While this may seem like an obvious statement, it’s a prevalent problem in North American food production. The Center for Disease Control estimates that each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of foodborne diseases.

In terms of managing a facility’s reputation, “mass foodborne illness outbreaks can destroy the reputations (and the bank accounts) of the companies involved, and in some cases it takes years (and smart marketing campaigns) to convince the public that there’s no longer any threat”, says Dan Myers, a writer for The Daily Meal.

While most food poisoning cases can be traced back to poor food handling practices, it is a process that is completely manageable with the inspection checklists available in Nimonik’s app. It can track everything in the kitchen, ranging from temperatures, storage and hygiene practices, in order to avoid the possibility of putting food’s safety at risk.

Benefits Of Food Safety Audits

Since quality management and food safety is of the utmost importance, utilizing an auditing system that can provide real-time assessment is a great advantage. Rather than looking through historical data and safety records, an auditing app will give you the ability to address any gaps on a day-to-day basis.

“Audits are also a good time to foster communication within the organization. Engaging with employees in interviews provides a multitude of viewpoints and is an opportunity to promote a sense of ownership and buy-in within the organization – this can go a long way in building a strong food safety culture.”

Beyond the safety of your consumers, building a food safety culture within your organization and preventing future problems, food safety audits provide the opportunity to build on the brand reputation. Furthermore, they can have a direct correlation with the bottom line of your company.

The Role Of Technology

Today, food safety audits are largely driven by technology. The management of necessary food safety checklists and quality insurance documentation requires organization of large amounts of paperwork and data. Moreover, the ability to access this documentation and analyze it is extremely important for a successful audit and proof of food safety. For example, an easy to use auditing app can help manage documents and workflows for auditing, as well as improve day-to-day business operations. An auditing app also provides assistance with tasks including the maintenance of training and certification records, statistics, data collection and analysis, which can all be streamlined and made accessible through an iPad.

Nimonik Audit contains over 1500 Free Quality, Safety and Environmental checklists based on industry standards from 65 countries and 25 industries. This app halves inspection times, creates intelligent checklists and forms for you and generates reports in the format you want.

Food companies must continue to conduct food security audits because they cannot afford not to. And with technology in the form of Nimonik’s app, food production companies can look forward to offering safe food to customers, always.

Try it Nimonik’s auditing app for free and gain access to easier quality and general food safety control.

In the past six months, Nimonik has observed technical amendments to municipal by-laws which could be easily overlooked. The changes concern fees charged for services rendered, fines used to enforce by-laws, and refinements to certain prohibitions.

In terms of compensation for the use of municipal infrastructure, fees related to sewers and drainage services have increased throughout the country, most notably in the municipalities of Edmonton, the Greater Vancouver Regional District and Saskatoon.

Similarly, fines have increased for the violation of certain prohibitions, for example the city of Calgary has increased fines associated with the By-law 5M2004 Community standards (AB-CY-bylaw5M2004) and the city of Cornwall has increased fines associated with the violation of the By-law 076-1994 Solid waste (ON-CL-bylaw076-1994).

By-laws across the country have also been refined and clarified in terms of what may be considered as an offense. For example, Calgary has defined those sound levels which would violate the By-law 5M2004 Community standards (AB-CY-bylaw5M2004) and the city of Cornwall has designated electronic wastes as a restricted solid waste material.

Although municipalities have not significantly changed the matters they regulate, these small changes remind us that all companies must be vigilant in ensuring operational compliance with the all the details of municipal by-laws. Looking forward to 2015 we expect municipalities to further increase the cost of environmental damage and use of municipal infrastructure. As our cities grow and municipal finances remain tight, an easy target for additional revenues will be the services that companies require to do business. Staying up to date on municipal, provincial and federal regulatory changes is essential for any well managed company.

To obtain a complete copy of recent municipal regulatory changes, signup for a free trial account on Nimonik at https://nimonikapp.com/simple_signup, we will email you a copy. If you already have a trial account, simply email us at info@nimonik.com for a copy of the report.

Let’s make 2015 a safe year for your workplace. Nimonik is building easy-to-use incident management tools and a training scheduler. To help refine our design, we are looking for Beta testers to provide feedback.
Beta program participants will receive a free 2 month subscription.

What we are working on

Training Scheduler – coming in 2015

Do you need a tool to help you manage training? Nimonik’s training module will let you upload training information, schedule deadlines and track progress. Training is a key element in any health and safety program, let us help you manage it better. Participate in our Beta program and receive a 2 month free subscription.

Incident Management – coming in 2015
Are you still recording incidents with pen and paper, word or excel file? With Nimonik, you will soon be able to record, report and investigate accidents, hazards, and near misses with an easy to use web and mobile tool. An easier tool means a more efficient way to ensure that your workplace is safe for everyone in 2015. Participate in our Beta program and receive a 2 month free subscription.

Provide feedback and receive a free subscription

Nimonik is building new features and we want to ensure they meet your requirements. To help us design and build something that works for your team, sign up below and we will be happy to discuss how we can help you in 2015.

Storage racks are the backbone of the logistics industry. Used by businesses around the world, their maintenance and safety should be a regular part of any professional company’s operations. A collapsing rack can not only kill staff, it can damage inventory, cause delays and reduce profitability.

Rack inspection requirements are becoming more and more common in building codes and it seems most countries have or are developing their respective standards companies should be aware of. In Canada, the CSA A344 and in the United States, the US RMI user guideline is an important benchmark, the EU has European Union EN15635, and Australia has the AS 4084-2012. Each standard has its particularities and depending your location, you should be inspecting against the right one.

Nimonik has put together a few free inspection checklists for inspections at your warehouse. We will be adding to this list over the year and if you have specific requirements, please contact us at info@nimonik.com